Click Frenzy becomes Click Fail as website crashes

It was dubbed 'the sale that stops the nation', but in the end it was Click Frenzy's website which ground to a halt. The 24 hour online sale, billed as the best place in the country to find a bargain, couldn't cope with the onslaught of traffic and crashed.

Transcript

icon-plusicon-minus

ELEANOR HALL: They dubbed it "the sale that stops the nation", but the attempt by some of Australia's major retailers to grab a chunk of the online market has backfired.

And instead it was Click Frenzy's own website which ground to a halt.

The 24-hour online sale couldn't cope with the huge volume of buyer traffic it generated and crashed.

As Will Ockenden reports.

WILL OCKENDEN: There was a frenzy of clicks, but it was mostly on the internet browser's refresh button.

As Click Frenzy's website went live last night at 7pm, millions of people logged on, immediately overloading internet servers.

Kate Morris, the founder of adorebeauty.com.au, was a retailer in the sale.

KATE MORRIS: From our perspective it's been really disappointing.

WILL OCKENDEN: The one-day super sale was an attempt by Australia's online retailers to fight back against overseas companies. The Click Frenzy sale was an amalgamation of hundreds of retailers, all offering deals for the consumer.

Kate Morris says while her website stayed online, she is worried Click Frenzy's failure will be a big setback for Australia's entire online retailing industry.

KATE MORRIS: We all got tarred with the same brush last night. You know, I was there watching the Facebook page and pretty much as soon as anybody posted anything about any of the retailers, regardless of whether they were online or bricks and mortar, dozens of people would jump in and started kicking the boot in of having a go.

Regardless, I mean, it was worse for the sites that did actually fail. Ours didn't, ours worked perfectly fine, but the ones that failed copped the worst of it. We all did get lumped in a bit together last night which was the worst part of it for us.

WILL OCKENDEN: The repercussions for the website's collapse have already begun.

The retailers in Click Frenzy's sale paid a fee for their business name and products to be listed.

Kate Morris says some of the retailers committed more than $30,000.

KATE MORRIS: As a retailer we paid to be part of the promotions, so Click Frenzy obviously, they did do a lot of PR and got quite a lot of publicity for the sale and that was something we were obviously keen to be part of.

WILL OCKENDEN: The wits on social media website Twitter were quick to the punch - the hashtag Click Frenzy became Click Fail.

SIMON BELL: It's never a good thing to create an expectation as Click Frenzy did and then not meet that expectation, and not only not meet it but to completely disappoint customers in this regard. I think it sets companies back to a significant extent. These businesses will have to do a fair bit of work to in a sense recover what we call service failure.

WILL OCKENDEN: The Click Frenzy website went down because so many people logged on simultaneously.

UltraServe is the company which hosts the Click Frenzy website. It says the system was geared to deal with one million visitors over 24 hours, but it got nearly double that all at once.

Samuel Yates is from UltraServe.

SAMUEL YATES: Maybe a tenth of all Australians trying to hit the site and Click Frenzy had accounted for a million users over the 24 hours. The site experienced performance issues for the first couple of hours. Our team worked to assist in provisioning additional capacity which stabilised the site.

WILL OCKENDEN: In the lead up to the event Click Frenzy was everywhere. Today, it's put out a statement apologising for the problems.

It says the failure actually shows there's a lot of demand in Australia for online retailing.

Online retailer Kate Morris agrees, but she wonders if the being part of Click Frenzy sale was worth it.

Would you do this kind of thing again?

KATE MORRIS: Look, you know, I think the idea is a really great idea. I think unfortunately everyone's experience with Click Frenzy and the incredibly vicious social media backlash around it is not something I'd really be keen to be part of again.